It is desirable in practice to effectively prevent any possible unauthorized access to the permanently or long-lastingly assigned communications address of a communications device by another communications device. Such object is that to which the present invention is directed.
Accordingly, a method is provided for registering a communications device in a communications network, wherein one or more temporary communications addresses are negotiated between the communications device and at least one registration unit of the communications network, the communications addresses being valid only for a predeterminable utilization period, and the respective temporary communications address being registered by the registration unit for such utilization period.
Through the use of a temporary communications address instead of the permanently or firmly assigned communications address, the communications device remains contactable or addressable by other communication addresses only under this temporarily allocated (i.e., dynamic) communications address. After a predetermined utilization period has expired, the respective temporary communications address of the communications device becomes invalid. Only during the period of validity of the respective temporary communications address can the communications device be validly addressed and accessed by other communications devices. In this way, the communications device can be protected against other communications devices obtaining undesired access to its true communications address. Through the temporary assignment of an alternative or replacement address in place of the actual firmly assigned communications address, the communications device remains addressable only for a predeterminable period of time, so that it is particularly secure against manipulative access by third parties. For example, the persistent sending of “spams” can be effectively prevented in this way since, after the pe-address of the communications device remains hidden from or invisible to other communications users.
The present invention also relates to a communications device and a registration unit with capabilities for implementing the method as described above.
Additional features and advantages of the present invention are described in, and will be apparent from, the following Detailed Description of the Invention and the Figures.
Elements with the same function and mode of operation are each given the same reference characters in FIGS. 1 to 9.